I Love You...From 5 Ft Away

Cold and flu season has officially arrived in our house. Thing 2 has had two bouts of pneumonia, or a pneumonia-like virus and Hubby is now recovering from a viral bronchitis that sent him to bed for a day.

Thing 1 and I, the women and girls of the family, appear to be the steel magnolias (dare I jinx myself?). To be on the safe side, I have sent myself to bed early, taken to drinking echinacea tea with fresh ginger in it, eating more oranges and avoiding Thing 2 and the Hubby.

Easier said than done. Because Thing 2 is almost 11, isn't feeling well and now needs three breathing treatments a day, I kind of can't avoid him. Hubby on the other hand, is clearly an adult, needs no breathing treatments and is generally self-sufficient. Still, it is harder to avoid him than one would think.

Just last night as I was in my mad dash to go to a school event with Thing 2, I asked Hubby where the camera was. Note: I did not ask him to get me the camera. However, he took it upon himself to not only go and get the camera (thereby touching it with his undoubtedly infectious hands) but to also take the actual camera out and turn it on to make sure it was working. The faces I was making while this little manuever was going on would be akin to the expression on Eddie Murphy's face in "Daddy Day Care" when he went to check on the state of the bathroom after one of the children had "used" it.

Of course, Hubby took great offense to this. The fact that I then proceeded to lecture him by pointing out that I had not asked him to get the camera, but rather where the camera was, did not improve relations between us. In fact, after I returned from the event, he asked me for a hug. I told him I could ill afford (okay, pun intended) to get sick, so no hug for 48 hours.

Cold and uncaring? Go ahead and call me uncaring in this instance, but it is the cold part I am trying to avoid. Being the chief cook and bottle washer in these parts, I can't afford to get sick normally. Add to this that I have a very big event going on for work next week which is all on me, and you can see why I have turned into a germaphobe.

It isn't actually that I don't care. In fact, after wiping down the phone with disinfectant (I saw him on the phone last night when I came in.) I called hubby today to see how he was feeling. Of course I do care and I do still love him, just from a safe distance and armed with disinfectant.

Little League, Big Egos

My alma mater, Trinity's, winning team!

My husband disagrees with me, but I think men have issues with aging just as much as women, they just handle it differently. While we go out and buy beauty creams, color our hair, avoid mirrors, maybe get botox, or if not, just blog about getting old (like me), men give up and seek to control something else in their lives, like Little League (or insert other sport here, like hockey).

These guys see themselves literally slipping, as we women do, but instead of focusing on the abdominal fat, the grey hairs, the decreased flexibility, they focus not on changing themselves or accepting the reality that it is out of their control (something we women refuse to accept either), but instead on controlling something else in their lives. Then along comes Little League. Perfect, somewhere to reign supreme again, memorize the big book of rules and boss around players and umpires and of course, the opposing team.

From what I have witnessed, most of these coaches run their teams like little kingdoms where they reign supreme. My son's coach is a fine example of this himself. Wanting total control, he begrudingly let my husband help out and allowed another dad to be the first base coach for games only. Most of the other coaches I have seen in the league have not seemed much better, though they did have more assistant coaches, which says something.

I give Little League as an example because I have just spent part of the morning writing a protest letter in response to a protest letter lodged by the coaches from the team which lost to my son's team yesterday. You see, their coaches, who were similar in number to the Bush Recount Team, approached the umpire after the game and explained that there were various infractions committed by my son's coach in terms of player positions. The key word in that last sentence is 'after.'

As I mentioned above, my son's coach is no angel, and I have problems with the way he often coached, from being too controlling of the team but not controlling enough of his emotions, to saying things to the children which were frankly inappropriate. However, I do think it becomes down right pathetic when at the end of the game both teams know who clearly won and who clearly lost, and yet we have to explain to our kids that because of some technicalities which weren't brought up in the game, the other team may end up winning and my son's team end up losing.

What it boils down to is that the other team doesn't like the way my son's coach coached. Well, neither did I, but who was I to complain? As my husband points out, we women have the opportunity to help out too. I don't know why more women don't help out. I saw one woman helping during warm up by catching the ball. I think that more women probably don't help out because it is like trying to get the TV remote control in a room of men. After a while, you give up and read a book or a magazine instead. It is just not that important. But not for these Little League coaches.

We as women should get more involved but are probably frankly intimidated by some of the encyclopedic knowledge of the rules by some of these guys. Though there was always softball growing up, the rules are different (as I understand it) and baseball has always been a pretty male bastion.

For my part, I don't actually like the sport very much and never did. It is way too slow and takes too long. That's not even counting the time spent writing the protest letters.